His co-host Mika Brzezinski once called Joe Scarborough the only “elegant, articulate, non-aggressive” conservative on TV. She may not believe that anymore after his last two days’ attacks on Texas Gov. Rick Perry and now Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, both potential 2012 Republican presidential nominees.

On his Friday show, Scarborough offered his thoughts about last night’s pre-Ames Straw Poll debate. He had mild criticisms for most of the field, but made it especially clear in a four-minute rant that he is not a Bachmann fan.

“[M]y big takeaway last night is how somebody like Michele Bachmann is tailor-made for a hot August night a year before serious presidential elections when Iowa, the whole world focuses on Iowa,” Scarborough said. “But it’s like this conspiracy. It’s the base of both parties, mainly the base of the Republican Party in Iowa pushing somebody that is never going to win, never going to get close to winning the presidential nomination, never get close to being a vice president, never going to be close to being relevant a year from now.

“You’ve got the Republican base doing that in Iowa. And it’s like a conspiracy because then the media can run articles on these people who are on the far right and point for a year about, ‘Look how whacked-out the Republican Party is.’”

Scarborough pointed to past Iowa straw polls and caucuses that failed to indicate who would be on both parties’ presidential tickets. He believes that while the edges of the political spectrum tend to dominate in Iowa, other states can provide a more realistic electoral picture.

“Do you remember four years ago,” Scarborough ranted, “when everybody was saying, ‘Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee,’ this, that and the other? And everybody said John McCain was dead. What did I say? I said I went home and talked to my dad, recently departed. My dad said when nobody else on the face of the earth was saying it, watch out for John McCain. He’s going to win this thing.

“You know why? He doesn’t live in Iowa. He doesn’t go to straw polls. He doesn’t look at the zany BS that these candidates say to win straw polls and sometimes to win Iowa or come in second in Iowa, when you actually have Pat Robertson beating the eventual nominee. This happens every four years.”

Scarborough threw barbs at what he said was Bachmann’s irresponsible position on the debt ceiling debate, and said he found Iowans’ debate applause for her appalling.

“Michele Bachmann’s first answer … was, ‘I wish the federal government had defaulted.’ Had defaulted a week after Americans lost, some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions, lost half of their 401(k)s, when trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering. She said that and got applause.

“I’ll let you go now. I got it off my chest. Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Now I will pass it on to you. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke. And anybody that sits here and says she has any chance of winning anything is out of their mind. Take your straw poll. Take your caucus. But Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.”